Chapter 18 #2
And me? I’ve always felt closer to absurdists or broken characters, you know that well enough already.
Bukowski. Camus. Tom Waits. The ones who sleep in chaos and drink with their ghosts.
Maybe that’s why I read you so clearly, but that’s also why I don’t know what we’re doing.
My brain is not working properly. What we had, what we have, changed me.
More than I want to admit. You made me want to be the kind of man who stays, and I’ve never known how to do that.
I grew up with people who loved through absence and silence, but not the knowing kind: through the things they never said. I inherited that: the urge to run before I get left. To hold something beautiful and start measuring when it will end. I thought I’d outrun it. I didn’t.
There’s a line from Bukowski you might hate, but it’s been stuck in my head for days: “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start.” And I did try. I do try. But I don’t know how to go all the way without unraveling. You deserve more than someone who might vanish mid-page.
I’m writing it all down now because I don’t trust myself to say it out loud.
Maybe I want to remember you not as a consequence of my indecision, but as the most surprising, honest chapter I never expected.
I’ll always be grateful to you. I’m grateful for you, also for the way you say “Just be” and mean it.
For the music you let me share and for the way you show up.
I hope when you read this, it doesn’t sound like I’m going anywhere. I simply don’t know what I’m doing, Alicia. I’m not right in the head. But I know I’ll carry your voice with me longer than you’ll ever realize.
Yours,
in all the ways I didn’t know I could be.
P
I didn’t move for five whole minutes after finishing the letter. Or more, hard to say.
I was the last one at the office, and I sat frozen in front of my inbox like I had just stepped out of my own body.
The letter was like a bomb I held in my hands and couldn’t decide whether to throw it into a safe space or diffuse it.
That’s what he’d called it: a chapter. A confession in bubble wrap of a goodbye.
I didn’t understand: why did he feel he had to say goodbye, and what was happening in Portland?
I minimized the window.
Clicked back.
Reread it.
And again.
Each time, a different line stuck with me.
You made me want to be the kind of man who stays.
But I’ve never known how to do that. By the fourth reread, I wasn’t sure if I was in love with him even more than before, or just falling deeper into something that no longer had a bottom.
By the fifth, I decided I didn’t care. Because—to paraphrase him—I didn’t care that he was broken or what broke him.
I held up my pain and didn’t flinch when his looked back.
I reread the letter in bed. I turned off all the lights except my nightstand and left the window open just a little. It was raining softly, that kind of Vancouver Island drizzle that felt like a lullaby. Autumn was coming.
I imagined him writing it, at the airport and alone, the click of the keyboard, the way his mouth would twitch after each line he wasn’t sure about, the way he’d tap his thumb against his phone like he always did when he was anxious.
And the last line: Yours, in all the ways I didn’t know I could be.
I pressed my thumb to that screen and dozed off to the rhythmic tap of the rain. I wasn’t ready to reply.
The morning after the Letter
I showered, got dressed, made coffee, but couldn’t taste it, and definitely didn’t remember finishing it. Dad noticed, surprisingly.
“You’re awfully quiet this morning,” he said from behind his kindle—a new, semi-modern alternative to his tired papers—a gift from Hannah.
“Just had a headache, but I’m fine.”
He nodded, but I could feel his observant eyes on me longer than usual.
I ducked out with some excuse about groceries and wandered up and down the marina instead, without buying anything.
Sat on a bench near the harbour and lighthouse and watched the seaplanes land and take off, yachts anchored along the spells, and watched the clouds shift across the sky.
Hours must have gone by, the wind was getting colder and stronger, and I woke up from my daydream with a shiver.
When I got back home, Mia called. I let it go to voicemail, then immediately felt guilty.
I put on Lizzo again. Tried dancing in my room and lasted precisely 42 seconds before I collapsed onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.
I missed his playlists and his stubble tickling my chin, and I missed his damn voice.
Most of all, I missed what we were before the chapter, as he called it, turned into a maybe.
The rest of what felt like an endless weekend
The quiet was unbearable. I tried folding laundry. Unfolded it again. Put on a film. Couldn’t follow the plot. Dad suggested a walk. I declined. I checked my phone every half hour.
Nothing. I opened his letter again, and his time I cried, not big sobs, just quiet tears sliding into the scars on my collarbone as I read the lines that weren’t promises or confessions of love, but he tried to make them feel like they were.
I took the black and white photos of me, all happy and free at the airfield, from under the bed, and caught myself thinking about Mom and how brave and successful she was at my age. That’s when I realized how badly I missed her.